AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Milo?” I say, trying for a casual note. “Is that your cat?”
She nods, chin bobbing to her chest, that flap of flesh bobbing with it.
“I didn’t know you have a cat,” I say.Keep her calm. Don’t let her go into shock.
She just keeps nodding.
“We’ll get you home,” I say.
“Key. You need the key.” She stops suddenly and starts patting her pockets.
I squeeze her good arm. “I have it. Let’s just keep walking. We’re almost there.”
She takes another step. Her leg buckles again, and this time I look. When I do, I gasp. There’s bone sticking through the bottom of her yoga pants.Bone.
“Sadie?” I say.
She resumes walking. The bone in her lower leg peeks out and pulls in, and my gorge rises.
How is she walking? Howthe hellis she walking?
I take her elbow. She pulls away without seeming to notice I grabbed it. She’s just moving. Blind to everything.
I grasp her arm tighter, and she spins. Her leg gives way, and I catch her, but she rips from my grip and grabs my forearms. Both hands dig into my arms so hard I let out a yelp of pain and shock. I try to yank free, but she has me in a vise grip.
That’s not possible. Her shoulder is dislocated.
Sadie yanks me to her until my face is mere inches from hers.
“You made me a promise,” she says, and it’s a guttural rasp, but somehow I hear it over the wind and rain. “You made an oath.”
“Oath? I-I don’t know—”
“You promised to look after me. I gave you everything, and you made an oath and youbrokeour pact.”
My brain reels to comprehend what she’s saying. Broke a promise? Made an oath? Maybe I once said something that she took as a promise.We’ll always be friends. I’ll always have your back. I’d never hurt you.Words between children too young to anticipate the possibility of a situation that would rip them apart.
But broke apact?
I remember the hex circle on the basement hatch, the symbol on the rocks, the one painted around the rat king.
I don’t understand.
Because they’re not connected. Because this is Sadie, horribly injured and out of her mind with confusion and pain. The woman is walking on a compound fracture. Trying to run with it. Do not expect anything she says to make sense.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Whatever you think I did, we’ll talk about it, but I need to get you back to the house.”
She wrenches my arms, her fingers digging in. “You owe me, girl. You owe—”
“Laney!”
Kit shouts right behind me. I’d forgotten he was following us, only pretending to have stormed off.
Sadie’s hands slam into me, and it’s an impossibly superhuman shove that sends me flying off my feet. I smack into a tree, pain rocketing through me. My feet slip on the now-wet leaves, and I start to slide, but something stops me. Pain rips through my shoulder.
“Don’t move!”
It’s Kit. He’s there, holding me still. Rain sluices over his face. He’s pushed his soaked hood off, and he’s leaning over me, looking at my back. He says something I don’t catch. Then he takes my shoulders, very gently.
